The Silk Road: A New History (30 page)

Forty-six different silver vessels served as medicine containers that were labeled with both the weight and the grade of their contents: “stalactite of upper-upper grade” or “stalactite of medium-upper grade.” Over 4.4 lbs (2 kg) of stalactite powder of different grades was buried in the hoard; Tang medical guides suggest daily doses of around 1.4 ounces, or 40 grams, for one or two hundred days to either calm the nerves or increase one’s energy. The 4.4 ounces (126 grams) of gold dust probably had medicinal uses, as did a block of litharge, a lead oxide added to skin ointments to cure cuts and blemishes.
³⁷

Museum exhibits about the Silk Road or Tang-dynasty Chang’an often feature the Hejiacun gold and silver vessels, because they combine different elements of Iranian and Chinese art in extraordinarily pleasing ways.
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In surviving paintings from the Sogdian city of Panjikent and Sogdian tomb panels found in China, Sogdian artists frequently mixed scenes showing Sogdian life, such as hunting or banquets with pictures of activities pursued by peoples, often Chinese, from other societies.

No one can tell by looking at a metal cup or container where it was made or who made it. Historians of technology tend to assume, though, that classic Sogdian shapes without Chinese motifs were made in Sogdiana and imported to China (if they were found in China), while any vessel whose shape departs from Sogdian prototypes was probably made in Chang’an, by Sogdian or Chinese craftsmen. By this measure, few of the Hejia Village vessels appear to be distinctly Sogdian: many more vessels have Chinese-style shapes.

A CUP FROM THE HEJIACUN VILLAGE HOARD
This gilt silver cup, measuring 2 inches (5.1 cm) tall, with a mouth 3.6 inches (9.1 cm) across, has several identifiable Sogdian characteristics: eight lobes, a thumb ring attached to a triangular medallion holding a deer, and a pearl border trim at its base. The exterior of the cup, like the murals on the northern wall of the Afrasiab house at Samarkand, alternates active scenes of men hunting, squarely in the tradition of Iranian royal art, with portraits of delicate women in Chinese gowns engaged in daily activities, like getting dressed or playing an instrument. Cultural Relics Publishing House.

The owner of the treasure separated the imported items from the other treasures and buried them in the silver jar with the handle; on the lid of the jar, he listed these goods.
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A miniature rock-crystal bowl, only 1 inch (2.5 cm) tall and 3.8 inches (9.6 cm) across, has eight lobes, an identifying characteristic of Sogdian manufacture. Rock crystal occurs naturally but looks like glass when it is free of imperfections. The main constituent of both glass and rock crystal is silica, and one can make glass by melting rock crystal, but only at high temperatures—above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Centigrade), temperatures far too hot for any premodern workshop to achieve. In addition to the rock-crystal bowl, the hoard contained a glass vessel that must have been imported from the west, since Chinese craftsmen learned how to make opaque glass in ancient times but translucent glass only much later.
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Historically, most glass was made from sand, limestone, and sodium carbonate.

Other imported items in the silver vase included gems not mined anywhere within the Tang empire: seven sapphires, two rubies, one topaz, and six agates. The largest, the topaz, weighed 119 grams (596 carats); the smallest (one of the rubies) was just 2.5 grams (12.5 carats). Rubies and sapphires originated in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Kashmir, India; topazes came as well from Burma and Sri Lanka as well as Japan and the Russian Urals. The unusual moss green color of the agates found at Hejia Village suggests an Indian source.
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A beautiful rhyton drinking vessel crafted from carnelian, a brownish-red agate, was probably made in Gandhara or the Tocharistan region of Afghanistan.
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This composition of the hoard, with a few imported items and many more locally made vessels, fits the overall pattern of Silk Road trade. Relatively few goods traveled long distances overland; those that did were often precious gem-stones that were small, light, and easy to carry. As Muslim armies conquered more territory, increasing numbers of migrants, including many skilled metal craftsmen, came to China and chose to settle in Chang’an, where many non-Chinese lived already. After Sogdian metalsmiths had migrated to China, they settled down and began to make vessels similar—but not identical—to those they had made in their homeland. As they learned more Chinese motifs and adjusted to a new clientele, they produced more hybrid items like the cup with its mixture of Chinese and Iranian elements.

A list of gifts that the emperor exchanged with An Lushan, before the Turco-Sogdian general rebelled, includes many items corresponding to objects in the Hejiacun hoard: Iranian-style silver ewers, parcel-gilt silver bowls, agate dishes, jade belts, coral, pearls, incense, and medicine in gold and silver boxes. In return the general gave Iranian-style bottles and plates made from silver and gold.
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This list of gifts confirms that the vessels in the Hejiacun hoard came from the highest level of Chang’an society, the emperor and his top-ranking courtiers.

Of all the items buried at Hejia Village, the most difficult to explain is the collection of 478 coins. Six were definitely made outside of China: one silver coin minted during the reign of the Sasanian emperor Khusrau II (reigned 590–628) and five silver coins from Japan, dating to 708–15. There was a seventh coin, apparently a gold coin minted by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–40), but, like so many of the Byzantine coins found in China, it is an imitation made in China, not a genuine Byzantine coin. Equally unusual was a selection of twenty historic Chinese coins. The earliest, dating to about 500
BCE
, were examples of China’s first currency, shaped like a shovel and a knife. Also included were coins from the Han dynasty (206
BCE
–220
CE
) and the centuries of disunity before the Tang unification. The final group of coins was the largest: 451 stamped with the Kaiyuan reign period (713–41). The Kaiyuan coins included bronze examples, which circulated widely at the time, as well as silver and gold coins, apparently specially made for the emperor to give out at parties (one such party occurred in 713, according to the official histories).
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The composition of the coin collection, including foreign-made, historic, and contemporary examples, has prompted some to wonder if it belonged to a private collector.
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How can we best explain the varied composition of the Hejia Village hoard? Although some items, like the medicinal powder and the coin collection, may seem as though they belonged to an individual, more of the collection—particularly the tax biscuits—looks as though it came from a government storehouse. All the items labeled with their weight and the name of the weighing official also point to an official storeroom. The coins may have belonged to a private coin collector, but no other collections from the Tang have been found; they could also have been kept by the section of the government that minted coins as a kind of reference collection. In premodern China, the line between individual and government property was not as sharp as in modern societies. Perhaps an official who worked in the mint added a few of his own possessions to the government property at the time of burial.

When would someone in Chang’an have been most likely to bury such an extraordinary collection of treasures? The first great rebellion that shattered the steady peace of the first century and a half of Tang rule occurred in 755, when An Lushan (or An Rokhshan) led a military uprising against the Tang emperor Xuanzong. After conquering Luoyang, An Lushan and the rebels took Chang’an in 755, forcing the emperor to flee the capital with his beautiful consort Yang Guifei. En route to Sichuan, the imperial guard threatened to mutiny unless the emperor killed Yang Guifei, and the emperor gave the order to strangle her. He then relinquished the throne in favor of his son.

The new emperor did not have enough troops to defeat the rebels and was forced to cede the power to tax to regional governors, who provided him with the troops he needed. For the next seven years, the war between the rebels and the Tang forces continued. Even though An Lushan was assassinated in 757 and his second-in-command was also assassinated in 761, the rebels maintained a strong presence until the Tang emperor asked the help of the Uighur kaghan, whose troops defeated the rebel army in 763.
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The Uighurs were allowed to sack the Tang capital as a reward for their services, and they devastated the city.

When the Tang forces finally regained control of the empire, they took measures against the Sogdians, whom they blamed for the rebellion. They replaced the character “An,” meaning “peace,” in all the names of gates and streets in the capital; many people, both Sogdian and not, whose family name was An, adopted new surnames.
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One account of the rebellion recounts that the general Gao Juren, himself ethnically Korean, who wrested control of Beijing from the rebels “ordered that those who killed
hu
[Iranians, most likely Sogdians] would be richly rewarded. As a result, the
jiehu
[a sub-set of the
hu
that An Lushan belonged to, possibly those living in north China] were completely exterminated. Small children were tossed in the air and caught on lances. Those who had big noses like the Sogdians and those who were killed by mistake for this reason were extremely numerous.”
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The targeting of Sogdians marked a new and ugly chapter in the history of the Silk Road. Previous dynasties had sometimes ordered the closing of monasteries and the forced laicization of monks and nuns, but no earlier ruler had ever targeted a minority group within the larger Chinese population in this way. Pogrom-like attacks on Sogdians did not occur everywhere Sogdians lived, but in Chang’an a new climate of intolerance seems to have set in. Even so, many foreigners living in Chang’an decided to stay within China, with many relocating to the area south of Beijing in modern Hebei Province, rather than risk returning to Islamified areas of Sogdiana and Central Asia.

The final defeat of the rebels did not bring peace to the beleaguered capital. In late 763 an army from the newly united Tibetan Empire attacked Chang’an and pillaged the city for two weeks before retreating. They continued to do so for the next twenty years. The Tang armies were powerless against the forces of the Tibetans, who, along with the Uighurs, succeeded the Tang as Asia’s leading military power for more than a century.